American Idol Recap: Paula Abdul Appeared Sober

by Thomas Jensen on Wednesday, January 17th, 2007

The first episode of the 6th season of American Idol premiered last night on Fox. The usual critics Simon Cowell, Paula Abdul and Randy Jackson were back judging the first round of Idol hopefuls. Singer Jewel was a celebrity guest judge.

Abdul’s spokesman, Jeff Ballard, claims tiredness was the cause of her odd behavior. Fox Execs came to Paula’s defense blaming technical difficulties as a result of her bizarre appearance.

In a statement Fox bosses say, "All of us at Fox have tremendous respect and admiration for Paula Abdul. She is a consummate professional who always gives 100 percent to everything she does. Last week, during a satellite press tour there were intermittent technical difficulties, including severe audio issues in which multiple stations were speaking to her at once. Rather than getting angry about these difficulties, or stopping the tour, Paula forged ahead and decided to have fun with the increasingly challenging situation. Unfortunately, because reporters and viewers were unaware of the situation, her humor was misconstrued."

As usual, people from around the country traveled to Minneapolis, Idol’s first stop in the first round of auditions. The majority of the contenders made absolute fools of themselves by singing off pitch, forgetting lyrics, crying on camera, dressing up in bizarre outfits, performing tricks such as juggling and just being strange in general.

Not everyone that tried out for Idol humiliated themselves though. Seventeen contestants made it to Hollywood, the next round in the competition.

Seattle is the next stop on the Idol train. The second part of the 2-part premier will air tomorrow evening.